


Gross Anatomy

by soda_coded



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Coda, Gen, M/M, Medical Procedures, Navel-Gazing, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soda_coded/pseuds/soda_coded
Summary: Malcolm gets stabbed instead of Jin.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright/Martin Whitly
Comments: 15
Kudos: 224





	Gross Anatomy

When he tries to think about it, it feels like it happened in flashes of red, flaring alarm. Bright red panic. The door opening. Tevin’s face. Sudden, shocking pain, red hot and worse than anything Malcolm had yet felt. Worse than being tazed. Worse than withdrawal. He'd touched a hand to the wound and in the red light of the wall alarm, it looked black on his fingers.

Malcolm wanted to put them in his mouth, but his knees buckled before he could. He opened his mouth to scream, but he coughed instead and more blood bubbled up his throat and out of his mouth. It was hotter than his spit, and slick on his chin.

“Malcolm!” Ainsley was screaming and screaming, or maybe that was still the alarm. Something was dragging him back and Malcolm was staring as Jin and the guard strongarmed the door closed. He tried to breathe again.

Choked.

His head was spinning like the beacon of light in the hall, and Malcolm fixed his gaze on it as he tried to think through the pain. Hands were on his body, moving him. He’d been stabbed, and with that knowledge the pain bloomed in him, enough that he sucked in a wet bloody gasp of air. His lung. It must have hit his lung. He tried to think of what that meant, images of precise anatomical art flashing like phosphenes behind his eyes. Punctured lung. Hemothorax. He needed to be calm. Slow the bleeding. Slow the breathing.

Doing that made him feel like he was already dying.

“That’s my good boy.” Martin said, but he sounded tense in a way Malcolm had never heard from him. Even the day the police cuffed him around the soft red wool of his sweater, the one that reminded Malcolm of Mr. Rogers, Martin had been calm. They used to watch him together, Malcolm remembered, and it was such a distant thought as to have belonged to a different life. Now, Martin's fingers moved with a forced calm, his throat, in his hair, pressing quickly at his wound, a hot sucking pain so intense that Malcolm shook. “Easy, Malcolm. Yes, help me, drag him here-”

Malcolm was across the red line before he even realized.

“Oh god, Dad, he’s bleeding so much- Malcolm- “

“Fuck, is he-”

“Shut up!” Martin snapped, and Malcolm tried to breath through his instinctual fear at the sound of his father’s anger. He hardly seemed to care about the camera trained on him, blood smearing his white uniform, his beard an untidy fray above Malcolm. He used to lay on Martin’s lap, and watch Mr. Rogers, back when his beard had been dark and trim and his father’s lap had seemed like the safest place in the world. He hated that it was still comforting to be here. He didn’t smell the same, cheap soap instead of the cologne he still smelled sometimes around his mother’s room.

Didn’t feel the same. His lap was smaller now than Malcolm remembered from his study, seated on one big thigh, hands gripping broad bound leather full of spidery slices organs in black lines. Malcolm’s eyes slipped closed-

Like flashes from a camera, like edits in a video, that’s his memory of the surgery.

When he opened his eyes again, it was harder to breath. His chest ached, hot than cold and each breath was a wet struggle. Above him, his father looked at him, warm eyes sighting along the curved length of a scalpel.

‘No’ Malcolm thought, knew his bloody lips shaped the word because he could feel them rub together, slick and tacky in turns from the blood. Knew Martin saw him because his lips twitched, the thought of a smile as he lowered his blade.

“It’s alright.” Martin said soothingly and Malcolm shook, but all he did was slice through the thin cloth of Malcolm’s dress shirt, baring red, sticky skin to his eyes. Didn’t realize Martin wasn’t talking to him until he spoke again. Maybe it was the way his eyes never left Malcolm’s, even when he could hardly focus his gaze from the pain. “He’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’m out of practice, but this is relatively procedural. Here- look- “

“Nnnn…” Malcolm tried. Fucking tried, but his father merely bent to the task at hand. Serial killers are marked by a lack of sympathy for designated victims. He knew that. He knew that, but his father loved the puppets, even when Malcolm had found them vaguely creepy, and had hummed along to the songs and had loved him, had loved him until the second Malcolm had asked the police to please not let his father love him anymore. 

He’d lost him for years, only to end up under his knife anyway. 

“Alright. You don’t mind if I talk…? It helps me focus- thank you, Ainsley. Normally, we’d be opening him up, removing and staunching the bleeding in his membrane, or worried about clotting, but the ambulance will reach us long before that’s a concern, thank god, which means we can focus on his breathing.” The alcohol pad is cold on his bare chest, and stings where it touches his torn skin. “So, after the prep we’ll just be draining the blood putting pressure on his lung… I always felt like Malcolm was under too much pressure.”

“He’ll be okay?” Ainsley asked, and then in the same urgent tone. “Jin, you’re recording, right?”

“Showtime.” Martin whispered, maybe for the camera, or maybe just for him and Malcolm tensed all over as the steel bit into him and oh god, it hurt, it hurt and he was dizzy and breathless. It was like being stabbed all over but worse and slowly and he was so sensitive and numb and he couldn’t-

Flashes of fucking memory he doesn’t want, that visit him in dreams and his therapists office in the forms of swords through his chest. Malcolm is no Damocles, he hadn’t begged for this throne, he’d been born to it as hateful as it was. 

“-alright, now the tubing, excellent, sweetheart. You have such steady hands-”

He could feel the tubing sliding into him, Martin’s hands steadying it where it entered and all he could think was that it was Martin pushing into him. That his father had finally found a way to get so deep into Malcolm’s chest that he’d never get rid of him. It made him panic, and yearn and with the stress the distance grew. He was so fuzzy now, his whole face a nostalgic blur.

Shock, Malcolm thought, but the thought came to him slowly. He was going into shock and this should have frightened him but Malcolm was beyond fear now.

“Okay, and then we’ll just make sure he’s comfortable-”

His world slid and shifted as they moved him and Malcolm sucked in a full breath, feeling almost cold as it filled his lungs fully. Everything hurt. Worse than the first time he’d fucked with no lube, worse than the car accident he’d been in during college, worse than watching friendly officers in smart black uniforms lead his father out of his life, and fold him into the back of a car. There had been flashing lights and sirens then too. Maybe there always was when you died.

Martin’s voice, so soft and so close, it had to be only for him.

“You’re going to fine, my boy. Daddy’s got you.”

  
  
  


When Malcolm woke up, he was in a hospital. Ainsley was across from him, her laptop on her knees, eyes hollow from the glow of the screen but she slammed it shut as soon as she saw he was awake.

“Malcolm! You’re awake, oh thank god!” She was beaming.

“Martin?” He asked, desperate to believe he had dreamed it. Rather have a sick dream, than another horrid memory.

“All those times, god, all those times Malcolm, when we were kids and you used to go see him, and Mom would get so upset and you’d tell me- you’d tell me ‘he’s more than just a killer, he’s still our dad’ and I couldn’t-”

“No-” Malcolm said, but just like with his father, Ainsley continued to cut into him.

“Malcolm, he saved you.” Her eyes were wet with tears, too bright. “Thank god we were with Dad.”

She squeezed out the words around a tight breath, like she knew they were wrong, but had to speak them into life. 

“Thank god, Malcolm, you’re okay.” And she was sobbing on him, her hand holding his tight. Malcolm closed his eyes. Anything, so he didn’t have to see the blade hanging over head.

He’d never get his father out of him now.


End file.
